The present invention relates generally to the field of data management, and more particularly to searching and querying data.
Generally, a faceted search (which is also referred to as faceted navigation or faceted browsing) refers to a technique for accessing a collection of information represented using a faceted classification system. This allows an end-user to explore the collected information by applying multiple filters. The facets are multiple explicit dimensions corresponding to properties of the information elements. The faceted classification system classifies each information element along facets and thus, enables the classifications to be accessed and ordered in multiple ways rather than in a single, pre-determined taxonomic order. These facets are derived from an analysis of the text of an item using entity extraction techniques or from pre-existing fields in a database such as the “author,” the “descriptor,” the “language,” and the “format.” In some instances, existing web-pages, product descriptions, or online collections of articles can be augmented when paired with or otherwise made available with navigational facets.